Men: 5 Things You Didn't Know

Men: We are an amazing group — the great builders of human civilization.

As gentlemen, however, we will first stand aside as feminist/antifeminist Camille Paglia begins the testimony to our greatness, since she’s so good at it (taken from Sexual Personae):

“We could make an epic catalog of male achievements, from paved roads, indoor plumbing, and washing machines to eyeglasses, antibiotics and disposable diapers… when I cross George Washington bridge or any of America’s great bridges, I think: men have done this. Construction is a sublime male poetry… If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”

Maybe that last line wasn’t germane to our topic, but why cut her off — she was on a roll. Let’s continue this grand testimony to our gender with men: 5 things you didn't know.

1- Women think men are smarter

In 2008, British researcher Adrian Furnham, a psychology professor at University College London, analyzed the results of 30 international studies measuring and comparing the IQs of men and women. Although he concluded that, in terms of IQ, the sexes are “fairly equal overall” (a description too vague for our tastes — did we win or not?), he also noted an important distinction in the perception of intelligence.

Collectively, men and women regard men as smarter — smarter than they actually are and smarter than women. Furnham traced this perception through cultures and even generations: Both sexes tend to regard their own sons, fathers and grandfathers as more intelligent than their daughters, mothers and grandmothers. He also found that men are guilty of overestimating their intelligence and that those who fall below average are the biggest culprits. Women routinely underestimate theirs, with the brighter ones being the worst offenders.

Set that against a Cornell University study called “Unskilled and Unaware of It,” which revealed that not only do incompetent people vastly overestimate their abilities, but when they fail, they’re doubly screwed because they lack the capacity to acknowledge, interpret and alter their behavior accordingly.

Which leads us here: Are women deliberately playing dumb? That would make us the dumb ones, unless we never realize it, in which case we continue the all-male march to the end of time confident in our brainpower. There is an operational advantage for one person to play dumb, but an entire gender? Maybe the game got out of hand long ago, allowing our culture to absorb these perceptions.

Whatever the case, it feels good to be this smart.

2- Men have their own biological clock

We do indeed have a biological clock of sorts, although, instead of one that stops, ours becomes increasingly unreliable over time.

As men age, we lose approximately 1% of testosterone every year. The consequence of this deficit is that sperm production decreases, and those that are produced are of a lower quality. For this reason, the older we get, the greater the chances that the children we spawn suffer from conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and Down syndrome to name a few.

To explain why, fertility experts point to cell division: About every 16 days the cells that create sperm and determine their genetic code go through the process of dividing. By the age of 50, that division has happened hundreds and hundreds of times, and each time it did, the genetic code was vulnerable to changes that can augment genetic deterioration, making birth defects increasingly likely.

Believe it or not, there are still a few more things you didn't know about men...